Eatonville To Allow Home Construction Near Ex-gravesites

EATONVILLE — Town officials will allow construction of six homes on a tract of land where decades ago two or three people were buried on part of the tract.

The site at Eaton and West streets is not platted as a cemetery, but a portion of it was used as a temporary graveyard 45 to 70 years ago, according to sworn statements from three longtime town residents.

The town also may have built a paved road and a sewage pumping station on top of other graves across the street from the disputed site, officials

said. The pumping station was built 13 years ago.

That area also is not a platted cemetery.

Burials were allowed at both sites until the graves could be moved to the Wymore Road cemetery, but no one remembers them being moved, said James Perry, attorney for a trust that is selling the land to builder Cecil Allen. Soil tests were conducted and no remains were found, he said.

''We haven't been able to determine if any graves are there, but for the sake of argument we will say the graves are there, and we won't build on them. We'll put some sort of memorial there,'' Perry told the town council Tuesday night. He said the town's building-setback rules probably would prevent construction on the burial area anyway.

The council voted 5 to 1 to allow development on the land to proceed. Opposed was council member Ada Sims, who first brought up the controversy last year in her monthly newsletter.

Perry said it is known that one Maitland man's mother is buried in a 25- foot-by-25-foot area on the southwest corner of the land. He said the man liked the idea of a memorial for the dead, but he wanted to check with his attorney.

Sims said she talked to the man and he had qualms about allowing the building near his mother's grave.

Although the state, not Eatonville, has legal responsibility for gravesites, the town council got involved in the issue after Sims objected to the development plans.

Town administrator Ronald Rogers last year advised the developers that they would have to determine if there was a graveyard on the land and get the town was going to develop a small park on a nearby site a couple of years ago, but workers found a couple of old tombstones there and halted work.

Preston Adams, president of Palm Estate Realty Inc., which is handling the land sale, said Perry contacted the state comptroller's office, which has jurisdiction over burial sites. He said an official of that office told Perry that while the state had no control over the site because it was not a legal cemetery, the developers should contact relatives to get their permission to build or to relocate the remains.

Town residents Hoyt Davis, Clifford Banks and Ruby Thomas signed affidavits stating that while they did not know the date of the last burial on the land, they believed it had been 45 to 70 years ago. They said they thought no more than three people were buried in the corner of the land.

''If there is any obligation to respect the graves, the obligation is moral and not legal,'' said town attorney Joseph Morrell.

Allen plans to plat a street called Bald Eagle Circle on the 2.4 acres of land and build six medium-priced homes there, Perry said.